The Aftermath
by VelvetMemeLord
Summary: After a major disagreement triggers a nuclear war, the 2Ps are forced to survive in a world polluted by radiation. The worst part? They're not immortal anymore.
1. Chapter 1 (05-23 08:44:35)

**_2P!Italy Veneziano's POV_**

The sun was beating down on me for what felt like hours, and not in the good way. I hated every second of it, and I didn't even have water to relieve me of my dehydration. Despite that, I forced myself to keep moving. Sweat was slowly soaking my clothing, but I didn't feel like taking them off to expose my skin to the fresh, irradiated air. I already took enough shit from nature itself as it was, so why should I have opened the floodgates any more than I needed to? I groaned and dragged my tires legs through the sand, clinging to the weather-beaten backpack I'd plucked off of a deceased survivor like my life depended on it. Which it did, to an extent.

I remembered seeing the man lying face down half-buried in the sand. I couldn't find any evidence that suggested that he'd been killed by fellow survivors. Besides, if he had been murdered, I wouldn't have gotten to the backpack he had with him. No one's so fucking stupid that they leave some dead guy's backpack behind in the middle of a desert. I recalled tugging at the backpack and yanking a finger or two off with it. They made a crunching sound that made me abnormally sick to my stomach. Normally, I'd be cutting fingers off of living people, but literally yanking them off a dead man didn't sit well with me.

"Shit. What the fuck am I doing not checking that backpack?" I found myself talking to myself again. It wasn't a habit I'd had until recently; not having Lutz, Kuro, or Flavio to talk to was driving me crazy. I had no friends to tell to fuck off, no country to go back to. Even Feliciano had up and disappeared on me. For the first time, I felt truly and undeniably alone. It wasn't something I wanted to acknowledge, so I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and checked what supplies I had gotten ahold of.

"Some dried almonds...instant pasta. Bleh. Berries. I could use those. A cutting knife. Nice. And...no fucking water. Great. Just great. I'll die of dehydration out here. Just how I've always wanted to die." I grumbled in a slightly sarcastic tone. I zipped up the bag again and slung it over my shoulder, slipping my arms into the straps. I started moving again, but just as slowly as before. Besides, I suspected that it might be worth the trouble to get the fuck out of Europe. There was nothing left for me there, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**_2P!Germany's POV_**

"This is..." I wandered through the ruined streets of my former capital city, my hands in my pockets. I'd finally made it back after so long...and _this_ was what I was greeted with? It seemed like a far cry from the Berlin I once knew. Corpses in different stages of decay littered the once lively streets, and the buildings I remembered were practically falling apart. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but at the same time, I knew my eyes didn't lie to me. I'd been warned not to get my hopes up, but I still felt my stomach sink. It felt like World War Two all over again, except there was no Soviet Union to take my brother away and hide him behind a constant reminder of how different the West and the East were. There was no America or Britain or France to help me rebuild. There was nothing in this desolate place to rebuild. There was nothing for me there.

I wandered down the streets I once knew, hoping for some inkling of nostalgia to hit me. But there was nothing much to get nostalgic about. I didn't know what else to do. That used to be Luciano's role to fill. Now that he was gone and probably dead, it was up to me to decide. It was a terrifying prospect, in all honesty. The loneliness hit me again, and I immediately moved on to something else.

I checked the bandages on my arm to see if the injury they covered up had healed. I remembered that about five days ago, a deranged young woman had found me. Being the kind of person I was, I immediately tried catcalling her. Considering the size of the wound she'd carved into me, it was very poor judgment. I hissed when I tried pulling the bandages off, so I quickly put them back on. Normally, an injury like that would have been gone the next day, but times had changed.

"Young man!" I screamed, feeling someone grab me unexpectedly. I grabbed my gun on reflex and turned to see a man who couldn't possibly be any older than sixty. The radiation had clearly gotten to him, since I could see more than a few cysts (or were they tumors?) of varying sizes lifting his tattered shirt a little bit. I didn't get a good look at his face before I unintentionally pulled the trigger and watched it explode into nothing but chunks of rough, pale flesh, bits and pieces of what I thought was his skull, and blood. The man fell over and landed face up, much to my dismay.

"What the _fuck_!" I dropped the gun immediately and, despite my disgust, took a long look at what I'd done. There was nothing but a hole where his face should have been, courtesy of my itchy trigger finger. I thought I could even see his fucking brain. Other than that, the rest of the corpse was unaffected, other than the blood staining his clothing. I picked up my gun and ran off to vomit. I couldn't look at him anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

**_2P!Japan's POV_**

I wished I could say that I wasn't already used to any of it. None of what I saw was particularly new to me, and nothing really got to me. Seeing Tokyo in ruins might have been upsetting to me at first, but the circumstances were the same as during the Second World War. I had been tasked with helping the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recover from the intense radiation. I remembered hoping that I would never have to see what I had seen then again. It didn't turn out that way, unfortunately. At first, I refused to leave home. Even though there was no home for me to return to, I said that I would rather die than leave. Things didn't go that smoothly, so without much hope left, I was forced to leave for the mainland.

I wasn't exactly certain of where I was going, but I knew that there was no going back. All I had that reminded me of home was my katana, and that was one thing that I had turned peddlers down over. Maybe I could have gotten more food or water if I had given it up, but I had already sworn to survive a different way. I would occasionally raid supermarkets for food, avoiding fellow survivors if I could. After all, only large groups of survivors and solo survivors with death wishes would dare to enter the supermarkets. The reason was that they were where the particularly dangerous people made their habitats.

Sometimes, my raids went swimmingly, and I'd make off with more than enough supplies for one survivor. My most successful raid was not too long after I had set foot on the mainland, and I had gotten so many things that I had to steal a cart to carry all of it out (none of the other survivors noticed a thing). Other times, I had to run for my life with what I could carry because they'd catch me in the act.

About one week from the last supermarket raid, I had exhausted my supplies and entered another supermarket with my cart so I could get a few more things than last time. It should have been a quick trip, but some of the survivors who had claimed the place caught my eye. I took my katana, abandoned the cart temporarily, and silently followed them to a large group that had gathered at the back of the supermarket.

"What are they...?" I tried to get a closer look at them, but since I risked certain death if I was too close, I took extreme caution. I watched as the group's leader tossed something into the rest of the group. They tore at whatever it was like they were dogs before it hit the ground. Some used their hands, and some used their teeth. Blood stained all of them. I thought that they were just eating some meat at first, perhaps some beef or pork.

As soon as I spotted one of them making off with a human foot, however, I turned away and returned to my cart. I finished getting what I needed to get and left without so much as making a noise or even looking back. I was disgusted and disturbed by the bizarre ritual. I was equally as confused, however; why would they need to eat human flesh when they had so much food available to them? I didn't stay to answer that question. I never wanted to see such a thing again.


	4. Chapter 4

**_2P!Italy Romano's POV_**

I woke up with a start, the sun just starting to rise. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and stood up, trying not to look at my soiled clothing. Normally, I would have panicked at the sight of a small speck of dirt on such an expensive suit, but times had changed. I heard a woman's voice gently calling out to me, so I turned to the source.

"It's time to move, Flavio. We can't stay here for long."

"H-how did you learn my name?"

"You had your passport on your person for some reason."

She kind of looked like Luciano if he were a girl. She was about my height, and she wore casual clothing. At least, compared to my clothing. I didn't want to fight with her, so I followed her into the light. A man who I assumed had to be her husband or brother was waiting for us. He immediately started asking me questions about what happened to me before the two of them found me, but I found that my memory was too fuzzy to tell him much. All I remembered was being so exhausted that I fainted. I just apologized for my poor memory so he could stop asking me questions.

I didn't ask for their names, since I figured that we would part ways soon enough. We started moving soon after we stopped talking. No one said anything for the first few miles, and for the first time in a while, I didn't want to say anything. I stayed slightly behind the couple, letting them lead the way. Soon, I heard them quietly talking to each other.

"He reminds me of her."

"Your sister? Come to think of it, he does seem to resemble her..."

"I wish she could be here with us."

"There was nothing we could do for her. You know that. She was sick, too sick to keep moving."

I didn't want to make them remember anything that could hurt them, so I didn't ask who they were talking about. From what I overheard, the woman had lost her sister to radiation sickness. I felt my heart sink; what if Luciano was dead too? I instantly pushed the thought from my mind. To cry in front of them would have torn away any shreds of dignity I had left. I didn't want to grieve in front of them, so I steeled myself the way my brother would have done in my position and kept walking.

"Flavio, are you okay? You're awfully quiet."

"Oh. I'm alright, thank you for asking."

I didn't say anything more. There was nothing more to say. I sighed and kept on following them in silence.


End file.
